The judicial front in the long-running battle over Uber and Lyft’s treatment of Massachusetts workers has been a flurry of paperwork for nearly four years. That’s about to change.

Monday marks the start of a massively impactful Suffolk Superior Court trial about whether the companies that redrew the transportation landscape, both here and across the country, did so by misclassifying their Bay State drivers as independent contractors instead of employees, with all of the pay and benefits that status entails.

For nearly a month, high-powered attorneys for Massachusetts, Uber and Lyft will argue over a question with implications for workers, businesses, lawmakers and a big-dollar political campaign, not to mention passengers and businesses who for more than a decade have made use of the apps.

“If the Attorney General wins this case, it will mean millions of Massachusetts riders would either see major reductions in service and a significant increase in costs, or lose ridesharing completely. All for something that the vast majority of drivers don’t even want,” said Theane Evangelis, legal counsel for Uber.

When she first filed the lawsuit, then-Attorney General Maura Healey alleged that Uber and Lyft “have gotten a free ride for far too long.”

“For years, these companies have systematically denied their drivers basic workplace protections and benefits and profited greatly from it,” she said at the outset of the fight.

Attorneys expect the trial will stretch several weeks with hours of testimony each day of proceedings. In that span, they expect to call on nearly five dozen people to testify about the ins and outs of ride-for-hiring driving, business models and labor law.

Several current or former drivers for Uber and Lyft in Massachusetts are set to speak, as are academic experts with experience studying management, corporate finance, economic modeling, marketing and more.

Lauren Moran, the chief of Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s fair labor division, is expected to testify. Uber’s head of U.S. city operations, Chad Dobbs, is on the witness list, as are a handful of Lyft executives.

The case hinges on a landmark section of state law often referred to as the “ABC test,” which predates the 2012 Massachusetts launch of Uber and the 2013 launch of Lyft in the Bay State.

For an employer to treat a worker as an independent contractor instead of an employee, they must be able to prove three points: that the worker was “free from control and direction”; that the service provided is “performed outside the usual course of business of the employer”; and that the individual has their own independent business or trade.

Campbell’s office plans to argue that Uber and Lyft cannot fulfill all three prongs of that test, suggesting in particular that the on-demand rides provided by drivers represent the core of the companies’ business.

In response, the ride-hailing apps will contend that their models are too novel to be defined as traditional employment. They say drivers have — and widely prefer — the flexibility to work as little or as much as they want, set their own hours and decline rides at will, plus pick up trips for direct competitors.

That practice, sometimes referred to as multi-apping, is widespread. Between Nov. 30, 2019 and Feb. 1, 2020, nearly 47 percent of drivers who used Lyft also used Uber on the same day, according to data Lyft included in a court filing.

Attorneys will make their case to Judge Peter Krupp, a Gov. Deval Patrick appointee who joined the court in 2013. He’s presided over a range of topics, including a woman falsely claiming to be a victim of the Boston Marathon bombings, police witness intimidation and overtime fraud. He was also involved in the high-profile Karen Read trial, ruling in November that the blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney could continue to attend proceedings but must stay away from witnesses he allegedly intimidated.

Before he joined the bench, Krupp worked for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Pompeo, at his own private practice, and as an assistant federal public defender, the News Service previously reported.

Uber and Lyft have named lawyers from Massachusetts, including several from the firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and other states to their team.

Much has changed in the nearly four years since Campbell’s predecessor, now-Gov. Healey, filed a lawsuit against Uber and Lyft in July 2020.

Facing orders to comply with a law in California that would have defined drivers as employees, Uber and Lyft joined with fellow gig economy power players to pump $200 million into a campaign behind Proposition 22, a ballot question that allowed the companies to define drivers as independent contractors. California voters approved the measure in November 2020, but it remains tied up in litigation en route to the California Supreme Court.

In September 2022, after New Jersey alleged Uber misclassified drivers as independent contractors, the company agreed to pay the state $100 million in a settlement. Just more than a year later, Uber and Lyft together paid $328 million to settle a wage theft case in New York.

And here in Massachusetts, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart are pursuing a ballot question that would establish a law declaring their drivers to be independent contractors, not employees, potentially while outlining some new benefits as well.

Their first pass collapsed in 2022 when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the measure improperly combined too many topics, running afoul of relatedness requirements that all ballot questions must fulfill. The successor proposal now faces a similar challenge.

Campaign organizers have kept five different drafts of the ballot question in the mix, hoping that at least one will survive the court challenge. They’ve said they only intend to submit a single measure to voters.

If Judge Krupp sides with the attorney general, it could transform the conversation around the ballot question from a hypothetical (should statute officially define drivers as independent contractors, which is the status quo even though parties disagree whether it’s legal?) into something more concrete (should Uber and Lyft be forced to treat drivers as employees as a judge suggested, or should the law change to allow for the model they prefer?). The inexact timing of a ruling is also a factor.

There’s also uncertainty about whether the apps would continue to operate in Massachusetts — where transportation network companies provided more than 60 million rides in 2022, according to the most recent state data — if both the attorney general’s lawsuit and the ballot campaign do not go their way.

Uber Director of Driver Policy Lucas Munoz in March told lawmakers he could not answer that question directly, adding that “there isn’t any jurisdiction where drivers operate as employees” currently.

WAREHAM – Two people have been charged with executing an organized retail theft from a local beauty store, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz has announced. 

Friday in Wareham District Court, Bianca L. Cruz, 35, of Lowell, and Jeremy Menendez, 34, of Nashua, N.H. pleaded not guilty at their arraignment on one count each of Organized Retail Crime and Larceny Over $1,200. Cruz was held on $50,000, and Menendez was held on $500 cash bail. The charges follow an investigation by the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office and Wareham Police. At approximately 7:26 p.m. Friday evening, Wareham Police received a call from an employee at the Ulta Beauty Supply store located at 2421 Cranberry Highway. The employee reported that a male and female entered the store, began filling up several bags with perfume and beauty products, and left the store without paying. The caller told police the pair left in a green Kia Soul. The clerk estimated the stolen items were worth more than $1,200.

Wareham Police responded to the Ulta Store to investigate and a BOLO was put out for the motor vehicle. Massachusetts State Police located the car traveling along Route 495, and conducted a motor vehicle stop. Cruz was operating the motor vehicle, Menendez was a passenger, and another female, who was identified as the owner of the car. Police were interviewing the female motor vehicle owner, and Menendez, when Cruz accelerated away from the scene, running over the female’s foot and causing injury. She was transported to a hospital for treatment. She is not being identified or charged at this time. 

The car and Cruz were later located in Bridgewater, and she was placed under arrest. 

As a result of the investigation, Wareham Police sought and obtained a search warrant for the motor vehicle, and it was executed Friday. Inside the car, investigators located more than $4,500 in Ulta products, and $1,400 in stolen products that were tracked to TJMaxx in Wareham. 

The two are next scheduled to appear in court on June 7. The investigation is ongoing by the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office and Wareham Police. 

Retail theft collectively costs communities billions annually, undermining local economies and threatening the viability of storefronts in neighborhoods across the country. In January, 2024, DA Cruz announced the formation of the Plymouth County Organized Retail Theft Task Force, and hosted more than 50 members of law enforcement and retailers at the Brockton office. The intent of the Organized Retail Theft Task Force is to work together with retailers, Chambers of Commerce, law enforcement, and others to address the issue of store theft.

State gas prices fell last week and reached an average of $3.59 per gallon of regular fuel on Monday, down from last week’s price of $3.60 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The average fuel price in state has risen about 28 cents since last month. According to the EIA, gas prices across the state in the last year have been as low as $3.07 on Jan. 29, 2024, and as high as $3.76 on Aug. 7, 2023.

A year ago, the average gas price in Massachusetts was 5% lower at $3.41 per gallon.

>> INTERACTIVE: See how your area’s gas prices have changed over the years at data.capecodtimes.com.

The average gas price in the United States last week was $3.64, making prices in the state about 1.5% lower than the nation’s average. The average national gas price is down from last week’s average of $3.65 per gallon.

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here. This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu.